Simplified Grammars
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TRUBNER'S COLLECTION OF SIMPLIFIED GRAMMARS OP THE PRINCIPAL ASIATIC AND EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. EDITED BY REINHOLD ROST, LL.D., PH.D. IX. OTTOMAN TURKISH. BY J. W. REDHOUSE. TRUBNER'S COLLECTION OF SIMPLIFIED GRAMMARS OF THE PRINCIPAL ASIATIC AND EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. EDITED BY REINHOLD ROST, UJ.D., PH.D. I. HINDUSTANI, PERSIAN, MODERN GREEK. AND ARABIC. BY E. M. GELDABT, M.A. Price 2s. 6d. BY THE LATE E. H. PALMEE, M.A. VI. Price 5s. ROUMANIAN. BY R. TORCEANU. II. Price 5s. HUNGARIAN. VII. BY I. SINGES. TIBETAN. Price 4s. 6d. BY H. A. JASCHZE. Price 5s. III. BASQUE. VIII. BY W. VAN EYS. DANISH. Price 3s. 6d. BY E. C. OTTE. Price 3s. 6d. IV. IX. MALAGASY. OTTOMAN TURKISH. BY G. W. PABKEE. BY J. W. REDHOUSE. Price 5s. Price 10s. 6d, Grammars of the following are in preparation .— Albanese, Anglo-Saxon, Assyrian, Bohemian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Chinese, Cymric and Gaelic, Dutch, Egyptian, Finnish, Hebrew, Kurdish, Malay, Pali, Polish, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Siamese, Singhalese, Swedish, &c, &c, &c. LONDON: TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILI. SIMPLIFIED GRAMMAR OF THE OTTOMAN-TURKISH LANGUAGE. BY J. W. REDHOUSE, M.R.A.S., HON. MBMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE LONDON: TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1884. [All rights reserved.] LONDON: GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LIMITED, BT. JOHN'S SQUARE, CLERKENWELL ROAD. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Preface . ix Note on Identity of Alphabets ..... xii CHAPTER I. LETTERS AND ORTHOGRAPHY. SECTION I. Number, Order, Forms, and Names of Letters . ..... 1 Synopsis of Arabic, Greek, and Latin Letters . 4 „ II. Phonetic Values of Letters, Vowel-Points, Orthographic Signs, Transliteration, Ottoman Euphony . 15 CHAPTER II. OTTOMAN ACCIDENCE. SECTION I. Nouns Substantive 51 „ II. Nouns Adjective ..... 68 „ III. Numerals ...... 74 „ IV. Pronouns ... 82 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE SECTION V. Demonstratives . 88 „ VI. Interrogatives ...... 89 „ VII. Relative Pronouns 90 „ VIII. Derivation of Verbs 92 „ „ (Table) . 94 „ IX. Conjugation of Verbs ; Moods; Tenses ; Participles ; Verbal Nouns ; Gerunds . 99 „ X. Numbers and Persons . 115 „ XI. Complex Categories of Verbs . 119 „ XII. First Complex Category . ... 120 „ XIII. Second „ „ . 125 „ XIV. Third „ „ 129 „ XV. Combined (Turkish) Conjugation . 133 „ XVI. Negative and Impotential Conjugations . 135 „ XVII. Dubitative, Potential, and Facile Verbs . 141 „ XVIII. Verb Substantive 144 „ XIX. Verbs of Presence and Absence, Existence and Non-Existence .... 147 „ XX. Compound Verbs . 148 „ XXI. Interrogative Verbs; Interrogation . 151 „ XXII. Adverbial Expressions . 154 „ XXIII. Prepositions . .156 „ XXIV. Conjunctions .... 156 „ XXV. Interjections 157 TABLE OF CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER III. THE OTTOMAN SYNTAX. PAGE SECTION I. Conversational brevity. — Precision in writing. 158 „ II. Syntax of Substantives . .161 „ III. „ Adjectives . 168 „ IV. „ Numerals . .170 ,, V. „ Pronouns . ... 173 „ VI. „ Verbs . .174 „ VII. „ the Participle .... 178 „ VIII. „ the Verbal Nouns and Infinitive 179 „ IX. „ the Gerunds . 181 ,, X. „ the Adverb . .182 „ XL „ the Preposition . 184 „ XII. „ the Conjunction . .185 „ XIII. „ the Interjection . 191 Addendum, on suppressed letter j . .193 Index . 195 ERRATA. PAGE o 10, 1. 22, for X* read J* 16, 1. 18, after k 99 &c. c S O x 24, 1. 15, for vll » OX 28, 1. 4, r> oo 29, i. 2, o o o wl O u> 1. 99 9, » » • Si + vis J» 1. 9, » Jiae. - Xo » .Uafi - J* Ml 1. 10, o 5* o fi - 1. J) 16, Jto,>e 30, 1. 1, O f/ 31, 1. 19, 35, 1. 2, 1) JJ bal '•^1 47, last line, » 1 » 1 O x J • 54, 1. 18, » jr 91, 1. 10, „ VIII....Verb „IX. ...Conjugation, p. 100 124, ox , J last line, J> &!/ )> o Ox O O, 127, first line, » » 154, 1. 3, add: (See p. 73, 1. 4.) 168, 1. 7, for (jf^lil^ read L^^f In pp. 10—1 6 >> > >> 5 PREFACE. THE Ottoman* Language, A>jJLiULc ismanlfja, is the most highly polished branch of the great Turkish tongue, which is spoken, with dialectic variations, across the whole breadth, nearly, of the middle region of the continent of Asia, impinging into Europe, even, in the Ottoman provinces, and also, in Southern Russia, up to the frontiers of the old kingdom of Poland. The Ottoman language is, in its grammar and vocabulary, fundamentally Turkish. It has, however, adopted, and con tinues more and more to adopt, as required, a vast number of Arabic, Persian, and foreign words (Greek, Armenian, Slavonic, Hungarian, Italian, French, English, &c), together with the use of a few of the grammatical rules of the Arabic and Persian, which are given as Turkish rules in the following pages, their origin being in each case specified. The great Turkish language, ^J turkje, Ottoman and non- Ottoman, has been classed by European writers as one of the " agglutinative" languages ; not inflecting its words, but X PREFACE. " glueing on," as it were, particles, " which were once in dependent words," to the root-words, and thus forming all the grammatical and derivative desinences in use. To my mind, this term "agglutinative" and its definition, are inapplicable to the Turkish language in general, and to the Ottoman Turkish in particular. These are, essentially and most truly, inflexional tongues ; none of their inflexions ever having been " independent words," but modifying par ticles only. The distinctive character of all the Turkish languages, or dialects, is that the root of a whole family, however numerous, of inflexions and derivations, is always recognizable at sight, seldom suffering any modification whatever, and always stand ing at the head of the inflexions or derivations, however complex in character these may be. When a modification of a root-word does take place, it is always of the simplest kind, always the softening of a hard or sharp consonant into the corresponding more liquid letter, and always of the final consonant only of the root. Thus, a o or t sometimes becomes a a, a j becomes a c, a sharp Arabic d becomes a soft Persian d, or the Ottoman modification of this latter, which is then pronounced like our most useful consonant y, or, in case of a dominant o or u vowel in the root, is pro nounced like our consonant w. PREFACE. XI The Ottoman Turkish has more vowel-sounds (eleven in number) than any other tongue known to me. As each of these may have a short and a long modification, they make twenty-two possible vowels in all. Every one of these is distinguished by a special mark in the transliterations of the present treatise, though it is impossible to attempt any such differentiation in the Arabic characters to which the Ottoman language is wedded. The rules of euphony regulate the pronunciation of every word in the Ottoman language; perfectly, in all of Turkish origin; and as far as is practicable, in what is radically foreign. Although a compound word is a thing totally unknown to the Turkish dialects, and of very rare occurrence in Arabic, the Ottoman language abounds with such, adopted from the Aryan, compounding Persian. Persian grammarians and writers first learnt how to mould into a harmonious whole the incongruous Aryan Persian and Semitic Arabic elements. Ottoman ingenuity has gone a step further, and blended in one noble speech the three conflicting elements of the Aryan, Semitic and Turanian classes of vocables. Fault is found by some with this intermixture of idioms; xii PREFACE. but an Englishman, of all the world, will know how to appre ciate a clever mosaic of diction; and a real student of the language will learn to admire many a true beauty, resulting from a masterly handling of the materials at his command, by any first-rate Ottoman literary celebrity, whether prose- writer or poet NOTE.—The manuscript of the present sketch Grammar was completed before Christmas, 1882, and copies of my table of identic alphabets have been in the hands of a few friends for the last four or five years. I have just had the pleasure and privilege of reading the admirable and exhaustive treatise on " The Alphabet," by the Rev. Isaac Taylor, and am rejoiced to find that he has come to the same conclusion as to the identity of the three; probably at an earlier date than the time, perhaps twenty years ago, when the idea began to force itself on my mind. I still feel inclined, however, to hold by the inference that the Phenicians gave the alphabet to Italy, quite independently of the Greek action which later on doubtlessly influenced the Italian culture. LONDON, September, 1883. J.W. R. OTTOMAN TURKISH GEAMMAE. CHAPTER I. THE LETTERS AND ORTHOGRAPHY. SECTION I. The Number, Order, Forms, and Names of the Letters. THERE are thirty-one distinct letters used in the Ottoman language. Some of these have more than one value ; and four of them are sometimes consonants, sometimes vowels. There is also a combination of two letters into one character, 5) or V, la, which Arabian piety has agreed to count as a letter, and which Persian and Turkish conformity has had no option but to adopt. Thirty-two letters have, therefore, to be named and enumerated, as follows:— t ellf, v^ be, CJ pe, o te, & se, -. jlm, •. chlm, - ha, ~ khf, a d&l, j zel, j rl, j ze, j zhe, ^ sin, ^ shin, ^> sad, ^J> did, \o tl, ]e> zl, c 'ayn, c gayn, ci fe, j qaf, ci) kaf, J lam, ^ mlm, ^ nun, j w6v, 8 he, S lam-ellf, ^ ye. The foregoing is the ordinary arrangement of the letters of the Ottoman alphabet, as learnt and repeated by children; B 2 OTTOMAN TURKISH GRAMMAR. excepting that they are not at first taught to mention, or to know, either of the three Persian letters, L-> pe, ~ chlm, and J zhe, which are not contained in the Arabic alphabet, their sounds and values being unknown to, and unpronounceable by, an Arab.